We had a beautiful morning!  The boys played outside for half and hour before school and we have enjoyed having our windows open!

When the boys came inside, Gavin worked on his rhyming game.

Austin really likes this bug matching game because he's played it every day this week!  I found it at a garage sale for $1 so I guess it was a good investment!  As he gets older we will use it for making patterns too.

We worked on counting 1 to 3.

Gavin reviewed his blend ladders this morning and practiced reading a little more.  In math he learned about place value, tens and ones.  The last week we've been saying 2-ten or 4-ten for 20 or 40 and showing the numbers on the abacus.  Today Gavin learned how the numbers look (2-ten/20) and which number is in the 10s place and which is in the 1s place.  So then I would call out a number, like 5-ten and 4 and he would show 54 on the place cards and then show me 5 tens and 4 on his abacus.

We got out Austin's penguin matching game from a few months ago and Austin matched the pictures.

Then he was vaccuming and talking on the phone.  He had stopped vaccuming by the time I grabbed the camera but was still talking on the phone.

We were supposed to do art yesterday but we forgot!  So we did it today.  We looked at the painting, The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in the 1500s and talked about how paintings can tell a story about an event.  So Gavin drew a picture of an event with watercolor crayons...Grandpa Ben standing next to his tractor by the creek.  I couldn't convince Gavin to put Grandpa Ben in a shirt but luckily I did convince him to put him in some pants!

It's a little abstract.  The orange blob is the tractor, the patchwork object on the left is a tree in fall and Grandpa Ben is standing next to the tractor.  The creek is along the bottom.

Austin and I read a couple books about apples today.

Here is The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Gavin and I read these books today.  We finished Vikings much to Gavin's disappointment.

I couldn't find a better picture of this book but it's the story of the Vikings told in comic book form.

 We read about Lyle the kindly Viking!  I was going to let the boys watch it because we used to have it on DVD but I couldn't find it.

This is the rhyming game Gavin was playing.

You may have noticed that Austin has been living in pajamas the last week and a half.  That isn't because we've been lazy, but we have been working on potty training and pajamas are easy to get off quickly.  Last week he did really good but was having one or two accidents a day, usually because he waited to the last minute so by the time he told me he had to go potty we didn't make it on time.  This week he's doing great!  He hasn't had any peeing accidents at all.  He's still having trouble pooping in the potty but we are working on it.